Posts Tagged ‘Beethoven’

If you have to nag your child to practice the piano, I have news for you. There’s something called the Battle of the Piano and you’ve already lost.

The Battle of the Piano is the time honored process whereby a child is either deemed a success at the piano or not.

Some children make it. They number 10% of all kids who try.

Some children don’t make it. They number 90% of all the kids who try.

The moment your child’s interest in piano lessons starts to wane, usually due to a lack of creativity on the teacher’s part, you have entered the Battle zone.

After what I call the “honeymoon,” where a child finds piano rather fun and interesting, there comes a moment of reality, when the child realizes subconsciously that the teacher has no tools OTHER THAN REPETITION.

The one tool of the non-creative piano teacher is repetition, mindless and numbing.

Such repetition is fine for an adult who is determined to play Beethoven, and is willing to pay the dues to do so. But for a six year old, it is a crushing regimen, a fact borne out by the 10%-90% statistics.

When a child’s interest in the piano wanes, they are surely headed for quitting if the teacher’s only tool is repetition.

As your nagging increases, the child becomes more and more alienated from the piano, until subconsciously the child blames the piano for your nagging. They can’t hate you for nagging, you’re Mom, so they hate the piano instead.

Mind you, all the while you’re unknowingly paying this teacher to make your child hate the piano, and you’re adding to the stress with your entreaties.

You ask the teacher for advice, after all, you’re paying them, and I guarantee you their only suggestion will be that the child practice more. That’s the one tool they have.

It’s as if your child hates broccoli, and the chef’s solution is to serve even larger portions. That chef knows nothing of child psychology and human nature.

Look at it from the child’s point of view. This crossfire of negativity from you and the piano teacher can have only one inevitable result, and that is the emotional destruction of the child’s desire to play.

Nagging won’t help. Nagging is a huge part of the problem, not the solution.

The child simply follows human nature.

What is the solution? A rule of thumb is to listen to your child.

Don’t think that going and observing a lesson will be any indicator of your child’s progress. The teacher, your employee, will be putting on a performance and your child will be terrified that you will be displeased.

Listen to your child. Go for a few weeks and see if it gets better. Keep listening to the child and ask them how they feel about it, and be sympathetic. Draw them out on exactly why they don’t like it. Assume they might be correct and get them to describe the lesson, perhaps request a comical reenactment to put them at ease and make them give you more details. You’re on their side.

Then, if the child’s attitude persists or gets worse, you have two choices.

First, try a different piano teacher. Spend your time talking to local people and find out if there is someone who specializes in children and has a reputation for making music fun for your age group. Find out which teachers are disciplinarians and avoid them, especially with younger kids.

The only other alternative is to give in to the child, and let them quit. It may actually be a better solution than allowing the bad feelings in the lessons to continue. Try a different instrument, switch to guitar, trumpet, drums, anything.

Or take a break from lessons and try again later when you’re sure a better teacher can be found. Find out what things the child finds fun about musical instruments. Go to a store and try out musical instruments.

Let them try a variety of instruments until they find one that suits them, and at which they seem comfortable and willing to expend at least a reasonable amount of effort.

Music lessons for children should be an enjoyable experience, and if it’s not, there’s something wrong.

The number one rule is to never force a child to learn music. Ever.

If you force them, I guarantee you they will end up hating it.

by John Aschenbrenner Copyright 2008 Walden Pond Press

Every child has their own internal speed limit for the piano. This is the pace at which they can comfortably learn the piano.

It is different for each child. Because one child learns Beethoven’s Fur Elise in five minutes doesn’t mean any other child will be able to do so as quickly.

A wise piano teacher is always testing their students, not for scales and abilities but for mood. It’s more important to make the child comfortable than to rush into new ideas.

A child who is happy and comfortable at the piano is far more likely to eventually accomplish what the piano teacher wants. The trick is for the teacher to be patient and move slowly enough that the child does not feel overwhelmed.

Since the main object of piano lessons is usually to make the child read music, it is important for the teacher to have a strategy for achieving that.

Thus, in between reading music, a piano teacher should play fun piano games when the child becomes fatigued with reading music. In my experience, younger children get tired of reading music in about five minutes. If you exceed this limit, you will have a sluggish student, for the mental exertions required to read music deplete kids of their energy quite quickly.

Keep using this bait and switch scenario. Start with a little work, when it becomes drudgery, as evidenced by the child’s mood, immediately switch to a light-hearted musical game.

When this game is finished, move back instantly to the problem that was exhausting them, and let them have another try. They will be refreshed and will make a little progress.

Don’t forget: the speed limit for hard work at the piano is five minutes.

Exceed it and you will have an exhausted child.

Obey it and you will be able to string those five minute periods into a musical education.

Want to be the Beethoven or Mozart of your generation? These days, thanks to wonderful innovations in technology, you can learn to play the piano without having to pay for expensive piano lessons. You can play piano online.

There are a lot of websites that allows you to learn to play a variety of musical instruments online, the most popular ones being the guitar, the drums, and the piano.

There’s one easy way to play piano online. Some learn piano websites are fully interactive. Basically, an image of the piano will appear and you’ll use the mouse to click on the keys. Hit the right keys and make fine music online.

If you think you’re good enough, you can even record your playing. This kind of program is written in Java and may take a while to download. These are usually free or you only need to pay a small fee.

You can also download software. This option may cost you a few bucks. Most piano software packages available online include songs and video files, interactive games, and piano lesson books about all kinds of piano playing – from classical to jazz.

Another creative piano lesson online involves teaching people to play the piano by ear. Using one technique, which involves teaching piano patterns one by one and mixing them as the lessons progress, you can play the piano without using written music sheets.

One advantage of learning piano online is it allows flexibility in your time schedule. You can learn to play piano online anytime and anywhere in the world as long as you have your laptop and an internet connection.

These are just a few out of the numerous amounts of famous violin players.

Ignaz Schuppanzigh was a celebrated violinist in Beethoven’s time. What is interesting regarding Schuppanzigh is that he began his career as a viola player and then changed over to the violin. This is what almost all musicians needed to do to become leaders. Nowadays Schuppanzigh is thought of only in correlation to Beethoven; still another crucial fact about him is that he was one of the first violinists to make his living mainly as a quartet player.

Maxim Vengerov is one of the lead participants in the world of violin players. At the age of four, he started having violin lessons and before long studied earnestly. The family went through some bad times. Maxim studied heavily and shortly drew the well-deserved rewards.

He started his concert calling only a few months after first starting and was still only ten when he was awarded the Junior Wieniawski Competition in Poland. Besides his global career, Maxim Vengerov also gives a lot of time to instructing master-classes.

There is no musical instrument constructed by the hands of man that holds such a mighty swing over the feelings of every living thing able of listening, as the violin. One of the greatest geniuses of the violin is Niccolo Paganini. He was born in the town of Genoa, Italy in 1782. There have been many stupendous violinists since the finish of the 19th century.

The development of the violin is an issue, which can be retraced back to the Dark ages, but the fifteenth century may be conceived as the point when the fine art of constructing musical instruments of the violin took place in Italy.

“What are those foot-thingies for?” Kids always ask that when they see me playing a tune on the piano.

“They’re called pedals, and they are what make the piano have a magic sound,” I reply.

Children in general cannot correctly operate the pedals until they are much older, but on certain pieces it is wise to let them hold the pedal down, without changing it, to see the effect it has. Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” and “Moonlight Sonata” are perfect examples of pieces with which you can start experimenting. Any piece will do to illustrate, as shown below.

Holding the pedal down without release will, of course, blur all the chords together, but it lets the child feel more in control of the piano. And it gets the child ready to use the pedals correctly, moving the pedal up and down every time the harmony (chord) changes.

Here’s how I begin to teach the pedal.

First, explain what each of the pedals does. There are three pedals, but some pianos do not have the rather obsolete middle pedal.

Right: Sustain
Middle: Does not work on almost all except the finest concert instruments. Ignore.
Left: Soft

Begin with the sustain pedal, the one on the right.

Before you say anything, illustrate so the child sees what the pedal does to the sound. Here’s how I do it:

Have the child hold the pedal down with their right foot. If they are too short, let them stand. Don’t play anything, just let them poke around and hold the pedal.

Then have them release the pedal while you play a C chord, arpeggiated slowly from the bottom of the keyboard to the top. Play very staccato (short) so the notes are sharp and clean with a space in between each note. In Piano by Number this would be:

C E G 1 3 5 8 10 12 15 17 19, etc.

I then say, “Now let’s make a chord castle.” They will say, “What’s that?”

Now have the child press the pedal, and you play the same keys again. The notes will seem to merge together into a lovely sonic mass. Call the sound a “chord castle.”

Give a command that says, “Off with the pedal,” so they know that the event has both an “on” and an “off.”

Make a game of having them hold the pedal, and you play other chords. Minor, major, diminished, augmented, half-diminished.

Explain that the pedal is like watercolors. If you have a dab of color (a note) and add a bit of water (pedal) the color mixes with the water and washes across the page. Pedal makes the sound ring in the room and makes it larger.

Most beginner pieces do not require the pedal (The Entertainer.) Many do (Moonlight Sonata.)

Do not restrict their access to the pedal. If they want to try Entertainer with the pedal, try it. But then explain that some pieces have a “dry” sound (play a staccato piece) and some have a “wet” sound (play a piece that demands pedal.)

As for the soft pedal, have the kids try it. First show them the difference between the soft pedal by playing Moonlight Sonata first without pedal (“I can play this soft without it.”) and then with pedal (“Listen how soft I can make it!)

Pedals are not really useful for the very early beginners, but if they ask, show them.

It’s their piano and the more they know what all the accessories do, the more they will like it.

Also, if they adopt the pedal(s) on pieces like Moonlight Sonata voluntarily, applaud their maturity, but do not teach them about changing the pedal. That process is all but impossible for beginners who are having trouble enough with their two hands, without adding the feet into the equation.

In general, it takes children until about the age of 10 or 11 to be able to try changing pedals. There are obvious exceptions, but don’t push it.

Kids feel like the pedal is some secret teacher’s device, because they can barely reach them.

Let them reach further than they can grasp.

Someday they will reach the pedals and already know what they do.